Look, in my defense, no one told me the world was ending.
If someone had knocked on my door and said, "Hey, buddy, grab your go-bag and a flashlight, the sky's cracking open," I might have postponed my 36-hour nap. Maybe.
But instead, I went to bed on a Tuesday after eating half a pizza, one too many melatonin gummies, and two glasses of boxed wine. I had just finished binge-watching a documentary about sloths—don't judge me, they're inspiring—and decided the world could wait while I caught up on five years of sleep debt.
Then I woke up… and civilization was gone.
I don't mean "oh no, the Wi-Fi is out" kind of gone. I mean birds nesting in vending machines, grass growing through the floorboards, and the sky having too many moons kind of gone. It was like Mother Nature had rage-quit humanity while I was drooling into my pillow.
Naturally, my first reaction was to assume I'd just overslept one really long weekend.
"Wow," I mumbled, scratching my beard—which had evolved into something between a wizard and a garden gnome. "That melatonin was no joke."
I shuffled into the kitchen. My fridge was as dead as my social life. The power was out, the milk had become a sentient cheese creature (I apologized to it and backed away), and someone had drawn eyes on all the apples in the fruit bowl. Or maybe the apples grew eyes. Jury's still out.
Then came the outside.
I opened the front door and was greeted by… nothing. No cars. No people. No Amazon packages (which was frankly more concerning than the apocalypse itself). Just vines wrapping around streetlights and a very smug raccoon sitting on my neighbor's car like he'd claimed it.
"Excuse me," I called out, because maybe the raccoon had answers.
He flipped me off with his little paws and scampered away with a granola bar.
That's when it hit me: the world had ended. While I was asleep. And not even a courtesy wake-up call?
I wandered down the street in my pajamas—plaid pants, fuzzy slippers, and a T-shirt that said Nap King. Every store was deserted, every billboard was sun-bleached, and someone had spray-painted "WE TOLD YOU TO WAKE UP" on a wall in giant neon letters.
Rude.
After scavenging a half-full thermos of cold coffee from what used to be a coffee shop (now mostly taken over by squirrels), I sat down on a bench—well, a broken swing bench dangling from one chain—and tried to piece it all together.
According to the notes I found later in a very passive-aggressive bunker labeled "IN CASE YOU FINALLY WAKE UP," humanity had dealt with:
A pandemic (not the one I slept through, another one).
An alien broadcast that triggered spontaneous interpretive dance in half the population.
A rogue AI that decided the best way to save the Earth was to delete people like browser cookies.
A failed time machine that duplicated Tuesdays for six months straight.
And a brief but intense era where ducks ruled the government.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, society quietly gave up and moved off-world. Mars, apparently. Real estate was cheaper, and the Wi-Fi was better.
So where did that leave me?
Alone. Alive. Wearing socks with holes and an expression that screamed too tired for this apocalypse.
But it wasn't all bad.
With everyone gone, parking was excellent. I could scream into the void without judgment. And best of all? I never had to attend another Zoom meeting again.
I found a journal on Day Three—technically it was written on an old Taco Bell menu with crayon, but it counts—and decided to document my new life as the last man on Earth. Here's a sample entry:
Day 3: Woke up. Stared into the abyss. The abyss winked. Not sure how I feel about that.
By Day 7, I had tamed a gang of semi-feral grocery store robots. By Day 10, I accidentally declared myself mayor of what used to be a gas station. My campaign slogan? "I Slept Through the Apocalypse and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Surely someone else must've survived?"
Maybe. Probably. There's some static coming from an old radio in my bathroom that sounds vaguely like a person humming Bohemian Rhapsody. I haven't built up the emotional energy to check it yet. I've been busy inventing microwave-less burritos using only sun heat and emotional instability.
One thing's for sure, though: the world as we knew it is gone.
And somehow, I—a man who once got tired halfway through assembling an IKEA chair—slept through it all.
But hey. New day. New world.
And I just found an unopened box of toaster strudels in a bunker.
Things are looking up.